Archive for February, 2011

I’m not sure which came first, the idea that social media is killing blogs or social media is killing email. Both arguments are brought up every so often, and both are equally ludicrous if you ask me. Earlier this week, we examined the former, and interestingly enough, the latter was also brought up by recent data from comScore and the Pew Internet Project.

Actually, it was The Discovery Channel, who looked at the data and asked, “Is email dead?” Is Email dying at the hands of social networks and texting? Tell us what you think.

“Overall, when you look at how many teens have ever sent an e-mail, it’s most of them, so it’s still being used,” said Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist with the Pew Internet Project. “It just isn’t used for communicating with people you’re primarily communicating with in your life, namely your friends, and it’s absolutely true that text messaging and messaging through social networks has supplanted e-mail messaging to friends.”

People might turn more and more to social networks for casual conversations, link sharing, and things like that, but call me when your banking and all your professional communicating are done through Facebook. In fact, call me when you receive notifications from all the social media sites you participate on are sent to your Facebook account. The jury’s still out on Facebook’s new messaging system, but let’s not forget, it launched with Facebook.com email addresses.

Email will continue to evolve, but it’s not going away – at least not in the foreseeable future. If social media’s going to kill email, it’s going to have to do a lot better than what it does so far.

Peter Zmijewski who is called as Innovator, investor, internet marketing guru and entrepreneur. Peter Zmijewski is also the founder and CEO at KeywordSpy. For more updates don’t go away and stay with us.

Lots of companies have a strong presence on Facebook, with Chipotle, Ford, and NBC all making significant moves just this week. But when it comes to effective marketing in the UK, new data from Experian Hitwise indicates that fashion brands know how to use Facebook best.

Robin Goad, who shared that finding in a corporate blog post earlier today, arrived at it by examining which sites people search for after leaving Facebook. Then he “created an Index score which measures searches for a brand after Facebook compared to searches for a brand in All Categories.”

You can see the results for yourself below, and Goad explained, “An Index score of 100 would be an average, but any score over 100 indicates that a brand is getting a much higher proportion of its searches after a visit to Facebook than it does in normal search.”

Not familiar with those names? Jack Wills, Republic, Topman, Topshop, River Island, Asos, Miss Selfridge, and New Look all make or sell clothing. (Play.com deals in CDs, DVDs, books, and the like.)

Marketers should take a close look at how fashion brands build up and interact with their audiences on Facebook, then. Perhaps not every tactic will be applicable elsewhere, but it looks like everyone has plenty to learn.

Peter Zmijewski who is called as Innovator, investor, internet marketing guru and entrepreneur. Peter Zmijewski is also the founder and CEO at KeywordSpy. For more updates don’t go away and stay with us.

In the third quarter of 2010 4.5 million media tablets shipped, according to a new report from ABI Research. Among those, 93 percent were Apple iPads. “Over time, Apple’s first-to-market iPad advantage will inevitably erode to some extent,” said Jeff Orr, Senior practice director, ABI Research.

ABI-Tablets “ABI Research has been tracking media tablets since December 2009; future quarterly editions of this Market Data product will include market share tracking of all the major media tablet vendors.”

EBook reader vendors continued to do well in their market, bringing new products to people in time for the 2010 holiday shopping season. “The US continues to be the leading market for eBook readers,” said Orr, “and the three top vendors, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Sony, are comfortably maintaining their top positions in it.”

Barnes & Noble introduced a color version of its Nook reader – the first color model from a major vendor – while Amazon introduced a third-generation Kindle. Along with their new capabilities, these products also had lower prices than previous versions of devices.

Peter Zmijewski who is called as Innovator, investor, internet marketing guru and entrepreneur. Peter Zmijewski is also the founder and CEO at KeywordSpy. For more updates don’t go away and stay with us.

Apple will unveil the iPad 2 on March 2nd at in event in San Francisco. Recent reports have indicated that the next iPad will be available through both AT&T and Verizon, and will be thinner, lighter, and will have at least one camera on the front, as well as more memory, and a more powerful graphics processor.

The iPad 2 should be able to continue the success of the first one, though the market is getting much more competitive.

When Apple announced its first quarter results in January, it said it had sold 7.33 million iPads in the quarter. Since its release, the company has reportedly sold about 15 million. Being available on both carriers will be big for sales of the iPad 2.
Apple will unveil the iPad 2 on March 2nd at in event in San Francisco. Recent reports have indicated that the next iPad will be available through both AT&T and Verizon, and will be thinner, lighter, and will have at least one camera on the front, as well as more memory, and a more powerful graphics processor.

The iPad 2 should be able to continue the success of the first one, though the market is getting much more competitive.

When Apple announced its first quarter results in January, it said it had sold 7.33 million iPads in the quarter. Since its release, the company has reportedly sold about 15 million. Being available on both carriers will be big for sales of the iPad 2.

Peter Zmijewski who is called as Innovator, investor, internet marketing guru and entrepreneur. Peter Zmijewski is also the founder and CEO at KeywordSpy. For more updates don’t go away and stay with us.

Pretty much everyone knows by now that Watson, the Jeopardy-playing supercomputer that was able to cream two human champions, was created by researchers at IBM. And IBM’s made clear that Watson doesn’t work its magic by searching the Internet. But apparently Yahoo tech did play a role in the creation of the machine.

A post on Yahoo’s official Yodel Anecdotal blog highlighted the connection by stating, “[W]hat makes Watson’s genius possible? A whole lot of storage, sophisticated hardware, super fast processors and Apache Hadoop, the open source technology pioneered by Yahoo! and at the epicenter of big data and cloud computing.”

Then the post continued, “Hadoop was used to create Watson’s ‘brain,’ or the database of knowledge and facilitation of Watson’s processing of enormously large volumes of data in milliseconds. Watson depends on 200 million pages of content and 500 gigabytes of preprocessed information to answer Jeopardy questions. That huge catalog of documents has to be searchable in seconds. On a single computer, it would be impossible to do, but by using Hadoop and dividing the work on to many computers it can be done.”

That’s an impressive boast for Yahoo to be able to make. Watson represents a huge step forward in information processing, so any connection entitles Yahoo to bragging rights. And since Watson is perhaps the most famous computer since Deep Blue, more than a few people should actually take note.

Yahoo Lots of researchers could reach out to Yahoo as a result.

Peter Zmijewski who is called as Innovator, investor, internet marketing guru and entrepreneur. Peter Zmijewski is also the founder and CEO at KeywordSpy. For more updates don’t go away and stay with us.

Google has introduced a new subscription service aimed at allowing publishers to offer their content to people on a wide range of devices.

The new service called Google One Pass allows publishers to control how and when they charge for content. Users who buy One Pass can access content on tablets, smart phones and websites using a single sign-in with an email and password.

The move by Google puts it in direct competition with Apple’s subscription service announced yesterday. With Google One Pass, Google will get 10 percent of revenues, compared to Apple’s 30 percent for its subscriptions.

Google says it launched One Pass because it “cares a lot about helping high quality content thrive online and about the future of journalism.”

Initial publishers participating in One Pass include German companies Axel Springer AG, Focus Online and Stern.de. Other publishers include Media General, NouvelObs, Popular Science, Prisa and Rust Communications.

Google One Pass is currently available for publishers in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S.

Peter Zmijewski who is called as Innovator, investor, internet marketing guru and entrepreneur.Peter Zmijewski is also the founder and CEO at KeywordSpy. For more updates don’t go away and stay with us.

Online video usage in the U.S. is up significantly from the same time last year as time spent viewing video on a PC/Mac/laptops from home and work locations increased 45 percent, according to a new report from Nielsen.

The number of unique online video viewers only increased by 3.1% from last January, but the level of activity was up as viewers streamed 28% more video and spent 45% more time watching. Total video streams also saw significant year-over-year growth, up 31.5% to 14.5 billion streams.

January saw new entries to the top 10 most popular video brands with music and entertainment site VEVO and video rental site Netflix entering at #3 and #9, respectively. Still a relatively new site, VEVO is showing signs of potential with over 32 million unique video viewers during the month, fewer than 100,000 viewers behind Facebook.

YouTube continued to be the most visited brand in January with 8.4 billion video streams followed by Hulu with more than 813 million streams and VEVO with more than 346 million streams.

When looking at the most engaging video brands – as measured by time spent – Netflix was the top destination as the average U.S. video viewer spent over 11 hours watching video on the site from home and work locations.

Nielsen also found 7 of the 10 most engaging video brands also saw double-digit increases in average time per viewer. U.S. video viewers nearly doubled their time spent viewing video on Veoh, spending 2 hours, 16 minutes on average in January. Justin.tv also saw notable growth as U.S. viewers increased their video viewing time on the site by 56% from last month.

Peter Zmijewski who is called as Innovator, investor, internet marketing guru and entrepreneur. Peter Zmijewski is also the founder and CEO at KeywordSpy. For more updates don’t go away and stay with us.

As a rule, Google doesn’t put out press releases when it fails to acquire companies, making a new rumor difficult to confirm. But the search giant may have tried to purchase an advertising firm called Admeld, and, despite having a solid reputation and more cash than many countries, been unsuccessful.

Of course, Google probably didn’t bring every penny of its $35.0 billion to the bargaining table. Jay Yarow and Nicholas Carlson explained today, “We’ve heard Google was willing to spend $150-$200 million on Admeld, but that price was too low for Admeld.”

So here’s a little more information about the company that supposedly turned down Google. Admeld was founded in 2007, and offers a real-time bidding platform designed to help publishers sell ads. It’s based in New York, and has been successful enough to establish offices in Berlin, London, San Francisco, and Toronto.

Also, Admeld raised $15 million in August, and the company’s vice president of operations hails from Google.

GoogleOne other fun fact: Admeld seems to be the third company to reject Google’s advances in the last little while, following Groupon and Path.

Anyway, Yarow and Carlson wrote indicated that a “source says Google will probably look at Admeld rival Pubmatic next.”

Peter Zmijewski who is called as Innovator, investor, internet marketing guru and entrepreneur. Peter Zmijewski is also the founder and CEO at KeywordSpy. For more updates don’t go away and stay with us.

Groupon employees might want to look for the quality of coffee at their workplace to improve in the near future. This afternoon, Groupon announced that Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, has joined its board of directors. Groupon got an unspecified amount of money from a VC firm, too.

Let’s cover the funding news first, since there’s not much to say. Groupon only explained in a statement, “Maveron LLC, a venture capital firm co-founded by Mr. Schultz, has invested in the company.”

Also, if you’re curious, the Maveron site shows that previous investments include more than a few successful entities, like Cranium, eBay, The Motley Fool, and Shutterfly.

Howard SchultzAs for Schultz, he’ll be the seventh member of Groupon’s board, joining Peter Barris, Kevin Efrusy, Brad Keywell, Eric Lefkofsky, Ted Leonsis, and Andrew Mason. Groupon appears very happy to have him, as well. The company stressed that Schultz was able to make Starbucks much more popular (and profitable).

Mason, the founder and CEO of Groupon, also said, “As CEO of one of the world’s most iconic brands, Howard is an invaluable addition to the Groupon board. His experience in building the culture and business of Starbucks and his relentless focus on innovation to improve customer experiences brings a unique combination of skills to our Board of Directors.”

Peter Zmijewski who is called as Innovator, investor, internet marketing guru and entrepreneur. Peter Zmijewski is also the founder and CEO at KeywordSpy. For more updates don’t go away and stay with us.

It’s pretty clear that Experian Hitwise has a comfortable familiarity with Tom Smykowski’s “Jump to Conclusions” mat, at least in regards to comparing search result accuracy with Google and Bing. It’s either that or perhaps the “online competitive intelligence service” needs another lesson in correlation and causation.

In a recent report discussing Bing’s improved market share — something the tech journalism sector is going wild about, but if I’m not mistaken, 68 percent is far greater than 27.4 — Experian made the bold statement that, because Bing users click search engine results 81.54 percent of the time, compared to 65.58 percent for Google users, Bing’s results are more accurate than Google’s.

Of course, considering the spat between Google and Bing, and Bing’s use of at least a small percentage of Google’s search engine results, it adds more skepticism to Hitwise’s claim.

As many of you know, the principle idea in “correlation does not equal causation” is one thing does not necessarily cause another, or in the case of Google and Bing’s search result accuracy, one piece of data does not make bold conclusions true.

Taken at face value, it’s easy to conclude Bing’s results are 16 percent more accurate, but then, when you consider so many more people are using Google to conduct Internet searches, the margin for non-clicks for any number of reasons — incorrect spelling, refining the original search query — is a lot larger than Bing’s.

Furthermore, what is the average experience level of Bing users? If Bing users are comprised predominantly of “Internet noobs,” for lack of a better term, would they not be more inclined to click the first result they saw, even if it was relevant or not? If Google’s users are “more experienced,” would they not be more selective about which results they clicked?

And if that’s the case, doesn’t that mean the overall quality of search results — across the board, not just with Google — need to be improved?

As for Google’s results being less accurate than Bing’s, before making such a claim, much more research is needed: an extensive, side-to-side comparison of multiple queries, not just reliance on how frequently the results were clicked. Another obvious aspect to consider is the user’s experience level. An Internet veteran will not click everything they see; whereas an Internet novice using Bing because they liked their witty “search overload” commercials is not as selective.

Peter Zmijewski who is called as Innovator, investor, internet marketing guru and entrepreneur. Peter Zmijewski is also the founder and CEO at KeywordSpy. For more updates don’t go away and stay with us.